...on life, music, sports, and whatever else strikes my fancy.

June 13, 2011

SIFF 2011 - Week 3 Reviews

The Off Hours

Attention movie makers: Real Life is BORING! If you must make a movie about people living real lives then something needs to happen! Something extraordinary or exciting or…different. This movie was just a bunch of jumbled scenes that didn’t seem to have much in common. It was dropping to a ‘2’ until the very end, when there was a glimmer of tension in the “plot”. I admit I was mostly interested in the truck driver, to see what he would ultimately decide to do. I ended up giving it a ‘3’, but it really wasn’t that good. And by the end of the movie still nothing had happened.

Lys

Seems like every year we miss one movie. We had signed up to run in the Fremont 5k Briefcase Relay, and once that was over and we had dinner and got home we decided we didn’t want to go back out again. We ended up watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets instead, as we’re trying to get through all seven movies before the final one is released.

Winnie the Pooh

This was a little strange, because Jim wasn’t feeling well so I went by myself. Then as I’m watching the movie I feel like I’ve seen or read it already, which I probably have. I had to remind myself that this was a children’s movie, so the structure was going to be a little different. As it was Disney of course I wanted to give it a ‘5’ but ended up at a ‘4’.

Hayfever

I think I was expecting something different with this movie, but it was kind of cute. Your basic mishaps and miscommunications, but enjoyable. That is until the end, when I got so mad at the direction the movie took that I was going to give it a ‘3’ out of anger. It mellowed by the end, so I gave it the ‘4’ I originally planned.

Toast

An interesting look at the childhood of Nigel Slater, a British food personality. Jim and I talked about the fact that he didn’t hide the fact that he was not very nice to his stepmother, but the more I think about it the more I think it was justified. A 9-year-old boy has lost his mother, a new woman is introduced into his life as a “cleaning lady”, and then his father is dating her? I don’t know how you expect a 9-year-old to process that. Plus she was an adult; she should have acted like one instead of like a jealous child. No voting since it was the final day.

Poupoupidou

Someday I may learn to like French films. Or maybe not. This was slow and predictable, and I even nodded off in the middle, but that may have been because this was my first double-header, with lunch in-between. The main character’s interactions with the sympathetic police officer were amusing, and allowed them to get to the truth.